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Thread: Frontline General     submit to reddit submit to twitter

  1. #1
    Old Odin
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    Frontline General

    Unlocking/Entry:

    Complete "A Pup No Longer (YourGCname)", accepted at your GC, to unlock Wolves' Den. Return to GC and complete "Like Civilized Men and Women (YourGCname)" to unlock Frontline.

    Currently you can only queue with people in the same Grand Company as you; keep in mind that you can only change GCs once you hit Second (Flame/Storm/Serpent) Lieutenant, the current highest rank. And there is also a 15 day lockout and 50k fee for changing GCs (the fee is waived for the very first change).

    Who's in my Data Center?

    Spoiler: show
    Primal:
    Behemoth
    Brynhildr
    Diabolos
    Excalibur
    Exodus
    Famfrit
    Hyperion
    Lamia
    Leviathan
    Malboro
    Ultros

    Aether:
    Adamantoise
    Balmung
    Cactuar
    Coeurl
    Faerie
    Gilgamesh
    Goblin
    Jenova
    Mateus
    Midgardsomr
    Sargatanas
    Siren
    Zalera

    Chaos:
    Cerberus
    Lich
    Moogle
    Odin
    Phoenix
    Ragnarok
    Shiva
    Zodiark

    Elemental:
    Aegis
    Atomos
    Carbuncle
    Garuda
    Gungnir
    Kujata
    Ramuh
    Tonberry
    Typhon
    Unicorn

    Mana:
    Anima
    Asura
    Belias
    Chocobo
    Hades
    Ixion
    Mandragora
    Masamune
    Pandaemonium
    Shinryu
    Titan

    Gaia:
    Alexander
    Bahamut
    Durandal
    Fenrir
    Ifrit
    Ridill
    Tiamat
    Ultima
    Valefor
    Yojimbo
    Zeromus


    Match Overview

    Adjusted map; blue lines indicate ledges along the outer paths. Blue circles indicate "shortcut rocks"; you can jump through these to take a little shortcut around mid area. Practice it.

    Spoiler: show




    To claim a flag for your faction, you need more people than another faction standing inside the circle. The more you outnumber, the faster you claim. So it's important, whenever you can, for people to fight inside the flag when you do not have ownership of it.

    The following point values are for a 72man (3 parties vs 3 parties vs 3 parties) match; there are small adjustments for lower-size matches.

    Turning a base/outpost from Neutral to your faction: +10 points
    Killing a player: +5
    Killing(majority damage) a Drone: +20 points
    Killing(majority damage) a Node: +200 points (+100 for 48man)
    Bonus for holding bases/outposts: Depends on how many
    1: 1/tick
    2: 2/tick
    3: 4/tick
    4: 8/tick
    5: 16/tick
    6: 32/tick (unconfirmed)
    Matches are played to 1600 (72man), 1200 (48man, Node is worth half points), or 800 (24man, A/C side bases are inactive).

    Stay with your party. Being split up generally accomplishes nothing.

    In a typical 72man, 3 party match, team A goes "left", C goes "right" and B goes mid / backup. For example if you are Immortal Flames, your A is going to Temple and your C is going Markets. The base opposite of your team's spawn (Manors in this case) should generally not be touched at all; takes too long to get over there and it typically turns into a 3-way battle.

    Frontline is not about big battles. It's a game of relieving and applying pressure; mostly to the healers.

    Team A / C:
    A/C's goal is to take the A/C side base and hold it. If you take it cleanly, you can push to that side's outpost and even spawn-camp them. Of course other teams also want to do that so this is heavily dependent on group coordination from DPS and defending your healers.

    Sometimes a team will send more than 1 party to A or C, or send multiple healers making it very difficult to kill them all. In these situations it is generally better to fall back and push a more lightly defended location rather than stay and give them free kills. The extra people are either pugs who aren't obeying orders or B team who will eventually have to go to mid.

    Do not go to mid. That's B's job. If B sucks there isn't much you can do about it.

    Team B:

    6 Interceptor Drones spawn in mid (Heliodrome) at 27:00 on duty timer, and then every 3 minutes after the last Drone dies. An Interceptor Node spawns somewhere around 20 to 22 minutes remaining; unsure of exact spawn condition yet. Kill credit is awarded for majority damage; if your GC does 51% damage to a drone, you don't have to hit it anymore.

    So you typically have a couple minutes between each drone spawn to do something and then come back up early. B should be on the way to mid from wherever they were at least 1 minute early (so around 28:00 if making the 27:00).

    Do keep in mind that Mid is at a high elevation; knockback from Fluid Aura, Aura Blast (SCH), Blast Shot (BRD), Mythril Tempest / Holmgang (WAR), and Garuda can be fatal.

    It's a point of debate whether B should stay in mid for drones or go assist A/C in some way. From experience, you can usually go do stuff for a bit after the 27:00 drones, but after the next set around 23ish you should stay in mid until the node and next drones.

    Rewards
    1st/2nd/3rd place
    400/300/200 exp
    600/450/300 wolf marks

    Every loss you personally suffer will give you a stacking 10% bonus to EXP earned until you win a match. I don't know if there's a cap to it.

    PvP Actions

    Spoiler: show




    You can make a keybind for PvP profile in Keybind > Shortcuts (there is no default iirc).

    You get 1 Action Point for every rank you earn in PvP, the max PvP rank is 40, and buying 1 rank of an action or trait costs 4 AP. So by 40 you will have 10 upgrades to spend.

    All actions are available from the start; the AP you earn by leveling just buys upgrades for them or extra STR/DEX/VIT/etc from traits. You do not have to buy them "in order"; for Aura Blast in the above screenshot you can just upgrade the cooldown and knockback distance, leaving the (lol) potency buff alone.

    You can refund your points anytime by hitting the Default button in PvP Profile > Actions and Traits. This will un-set any PvP actions in Actions and Traits (the bottom screenshot) as well, so be sure to re-set those before leaving the starting gate. You can set them outside of the gate, but they will be on cooldown and you cannot do it while "engaged".

    You can change jobs at any time in the starting area; because of this you should always try to go all-out in your point investment in one job, and just refund if you are switching. A macro like below is helpful for this:

    Spoiler: show


    Mechanical Differences from PvE / Death and Raising
    -Any attacks that deal direct damage (such as Miasma, Fire, Heavy Shot, etc) will always interrupt spellcasting, unless the caster is using Surecast, Equanimity, or the damage is prevented by Stoneskin / Adloquium / Manawall / Manaward.
    --Pet attacks do not inherently interrupt casting, but the Stun/knockback can.

    -Bards have a ranged damage penalty; around the distance where you end up after Repelling Shot is the "sweet spot". Being closer or father than this makes you do less damage.

    -If hit by an attack that does direct damage while on a mount, a 20s Heavy effect will be inflicted. SMN/SCH take note that you want to tag them with Ruin 2 or Aero, not Bio. Or sleep/bind them on their mount.

    -"Purify" can be used on other people. Healers take care not to accidentally use on someone else when you meant to use it on yourself.

    -The healer PvP action "Divine Breath" will revive without giving weakness.

    -After being raised, you have about 5 seconds of total invincibility to damage as long as you do not use any action, including Sprint, Mount, or healing yourself.
    --You are not immune to status-inflicting attacks that do not inflict damage, such as Sleep, or Lethargy.

    -When you die in Frontline, you must wait 5 seconds before you can hit Return. Every consecutive death adds 5 seconds.
    --You only get increasing penalty if you Return; being raised does not increase the respawn timer.

    -On that note, you can use Return while alive to go back to home base as long as you are not engaged.

    Jobs / Gearing Up

    Melee LB1 has been observed to do around 5k-5.4k damage depending on if there's a gimp weapon in the party.
    Caster LB1 is around 3.5k and is hard to dodge unless you were already on the edge.

    Melee LB2 typically does 10-11k damage.
    Caster LB2 is basically AoE oneshot, but is easy to walk out of. Coordinate with stuns sleeps or binds.

    Remember that people can see caster LB circle. Can scare them by feinting it once or twice.

    Morale does not work in Frontline, so PvP gear is relatively useless here due to having only one secondary. The effects of materia are also not counted. Defense and Magic Defense also do nothing. Buffs that affect "Damage Dealt / Damage Received", like Raging Strikes and Sentinel, do function normally.

    Accuracy is a functionally pointless stat in PvP; hit/miss chance is only modified by Evasion moves like Featherfoot / Attunement, and Blind effects. Because of this you want to try to avoid any gear that has Accuracy on it. For tank gear, Parry is also pretty pointless.

    Maximize Det/Crit/Speed secondaries on all gear where possible. Because of the i80 sync, a i90 piece with crit/speed is better than a i110 piece with acc/speed. A i80 piece with crit/det and a i100 piece with crit/det are equally good, and so on.

    Tanks: Forget VIT. Use STR accs. You're a DPS.

    Healers: Forget MND, use VIT accs. You're a tank. Most VIT accs unfortunately have Parry/Acc/Skillspeed but it's not something you can really help. The PvP VIT accs usually have crit/det so they are actually not bad picks. Do not forget about Surecast; it's actually useful here.

    Melee: You basically have 2-3 Invigorates (Invigorate, Enliven, PvP TP meds if you desire), so don't be stingy about using Sprint to chase down people.

    Party Formation:

    -A and C should each have 3 healers; at least 1 WHM and SCH.
    -B should have 2 healers.
    -One person capable of crowd control at least is a must. BLM is ideal for this imo.
    -1 tank at most, MRD or PLD.
    -At least 1 BRD in B.

  2. #2
    Mr. Anna Kendrick
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    WAR
    Defiance
    cooldowns / +HP recovery JAs
    +VIT all the way

    Stand under the opposition's drop-in, Tomahawk everyone dropping in on mounts. Piss off everyone. Survive as long as you can. Funnest I've had except for the one time I somehow was low on HP, jumped off the top, and lived, and a DPS followed after me pursuing a kill and landed dead next to me.

  3. #3
    Old Odin
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    Wasting time at their spawn is better when you also have their flag and are killing people instead of just annoying them.

    I guess that's another thing; get off your mount well out of range. You can't even Purify on a mount so if you're slept or bound on it, you're screwed for a good few seconds.

    Edit: aside:


  4. #4
    Tom Wilson will never be good.
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    people keep telling me Uldah is terrible at pvp.

    Spoiler: show


    I guess they don't play when we pvp.

  5. #5
    E. Body
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    If you're B and your group times going to mid well and no one is there, have your brd camp out the ramp, being able to pinpoint kill their healer helps a lot plus that kill count.

  6. #6

    Having anyone with decent crowd control camping the ramp of whichever team poses the greater threat can completely cripple them.

    You don't need to stop them entirely or even kill them, just delay them long enough for your group to get majority damage on as many Drones as possible.

    WHM/BLM are probably best suited for it. BLM can ranged AoE bind with Freeze, AoE sleep, Heavy. WHM just being there will make people hesitant because of Fluid Aura but they can also sleep/heavy, if they all rush you to gangbang a well timed Swift-Holy followed by more Holy can stunlock a mess of melee and ofc you have your cooldowns to survive longer.

    Advanced mode is to have a SCH or WHM at the top of the ramp to make them skittish (SCH has Aura Blast knockback) with a BLM covering them at range out of sight ready to bind/sleep while they're all trying to burn down the healer.

    MRD can do a decent job at this as well if Mythril Tempest is up but any smart PT is going to just try and get past them asap so it's sort of a one-shot deal.

    BRD is similar in that they can't do much once they blow Blast Shot.

  7. #7
    E. Body
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    I feel that PLD should have gotten a knockback since that would make them useful as opposed to a gimp dps with cover / testudo. The very nature of how front lines work makes their stunning ability iffy since a lot of DPS likes to use it at bad times or don't focus healers when stunned.

    At this time, I only see them as being useful if you can successfully bait people into attacking you instead of the whm behind you.

  8. #8
    Old Odin
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    A good PLD with a good premade VOIP team with absolutely no stupid DRGs from another party mucking up stun DR would be really good for the same reason burning down the mage add in Levi EX works, they still have Full Swing compared to WAR/MRD and Testudo/Cover+buffs is not that bad. They are just undeniably one of the worst classes to pug with and the effort put in is a little much for most people at the moment, in my opinion.

  9. #9
    Smells like Onions
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    Another notable difference from PvE to PvP is that both defense and magic defense are considered to be 0, thus any buff that directly affects defense/magic defense (Foresight, Protect, etc.) won't have any beneficial effect. However, I don't think this applies to any buff that provides damage mitigation as a pure stat (Sentinel, Vengeance, etc.) as they reduce damage taken instead of buffing "0" defense. Hollowed Ground and Holmgang still work identical to PvE.

  10. #10
    Old Odin
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seravi Edalborez View Post
    Morale does not work in Frontline, so PvP gear is relatively useless here due to having only one secondary. The effects of materia are also not counted. Defense and Magic Defense also do nothing. Buffs that affect "Damage Dealt / Damage Received", like Raging Strikes and Sentinel, do function normally.
    .

  11. #11

    Any idea if green/blue/purple gear is synced differently for when trying to assemble the perfect set? Will a (hypothetical) Gae Bolg Novus with DET/SS have higher stats than Liberator? Or Coil gear do better than HM dungeon greens?

  12. #12

    The stats are all synced to the same ilvl 80 caps.

    It's not the same as regular level sync like in dungeons.

  13. #13
    Old Odin
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    Novus I have no idea but other gear syncs exactly like you would expect an i80 piece with the same secondary distribution to be.

    Look at most crafted pieces before you meld them. They usually have a high (capped) secondary and a low (not quite capped) secondary. The caps are a little different depending on which slot, generally Weapon > Body/Legs > Hands/Feet/Head > Belt/Accessories. It's all proportional.

    Best example off the top of my head; BRD CT and ST gloves (and we throw in some other one to avoid confusion):
    http://xivdb.com/?item/8324/Amon%27s-Sleeves
    http://xivdb.com/?item/3735/Ballad-Gauntlets
    http://xivdb.com/?item/8244/Cuffs-of-the-Divine-Light

    i80 Ballad Gauntlets have Det13 (capped for this slot), Crit 13.
    i100 Amon's Sleeves have Det16(capped), Crit 16.
    i80 Cuffs otDL have Acc19 (capped; det caps lower than other secondaries), Speed 13.

    Amon's Sleeves perform identically to Ballad Gauntlets.

  14. #14

    Quote Originally Posted by Niiro View Post
    The stats are all synced to the same ilvl 80 caps.

    It's not the same as regular level sync like in dungeons.
    Thanks. This is why I was uncertain since it's different in that scenario.

  15. #15

    Also any idea if crit effects players any different? Not sure if it's like XI where it's AGI vs DEX etc.. Also same modifier for the damage calculation? Wondering if I want to shoot for det/ss or crit/ss since I feel SS is a much more powerful stat here since it's more about bursting people down and you have 2 meditates backing you up.

  16. #16
    D. Ring
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    Quote Originally Posted by Niiro View Post
    It's not the same as regular level sync like in dungeons.
    Is that not exactly what regular level sync does?
    1) Ignore materia
    2) Cap stats to the max available to gear of the iLvl you're capped to

    ...no?

  17. #17
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    Don't forget potions :D
    Versatile and free, usually get to use a couple for all kinds of uses. I don't know if this is true with all DoT's but I was ThunIII'd by a blm and it interrupted all my cast, very annoying.

  18. #18

    Quote Originally Posted by Raldo View Post
    Is that not exactly what regular level sync does?
    1) Ignore materia
    2) Cap stats to the max available to gear of the iLvl you're capped to

    ...no?
    That's not what happens in dungeons.

    Materia aren't ignored and stats are capped slightly below that of the level you're capped to.

    ie. If you're capped at level 30, an HQ steel cuirass (level 30, ilvl 30) will have higher stats than an Allagan Cuirass.

    Gear synced down in level sync receives a minor stat penalty.

    ilvl sync doesn't do this, which atm is only in FL and the ilvl 80 sync Wolve's Den.

  19. #19
    Old Odin
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    I think materia is ignored in dungeons though; I try to wear my i70 penta Astral Rings and get no VIT from it.

    Regardless, the reason you can stat twink in say 30/40 Wolves Den is that it only restricts equip level, not ilvl. So a melded lv40 piece or a piece with a higher ilvl than 40 (like pink weapons) will "break the rules".

    Quote Originally Posted by Neon_Sea View Post
    Don't forget potions :D
    Versatile and free, usually get to use a couple for all kinds of uses. I don't know if this is true with all DoT's but I was ThunIII'd by a blm and it interrupted all my cast, very annoying.
    Just the initial cast damage interrupted you, not the dot part.

  20. #20
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    No, Thun III dot tick was interrupting me unless it was something else which I'm pretty certain there was nothing of.

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